October 10, 2012

Real People Are Different From Us

In case you've ever wondered why marketing professionals are so ridiculously obsessed with the digital world, and so out of touch with real people in the real world, a group called the Media Behavior Institute did a very interesting little study.

They are quick to point out that this is not scientifically valid (which is true of most marketing and media research, but very rarely acknowledged.) But it gives us a quick glimpse into exactly how skewed our media wizards' vision of the rest of the world's media habits may be -- especially as it relates to online and mobile media habits.

The Institute compared the media habits of advertising executives to the general population. You can read more details about the study here. Here are some charts that show you the remarkable differences between how media pros and real people use media.

If you want to understand the marketing industry's obsession with all things digital, look no further.Thanks to Paul Benjou for alerting me to this.

Ad Contrarian Says:

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."